Radiant Wasp and The Glove of Darkness
by shenandoahok
Summary: This story takes place a few years after Bruce Wayne puts up his uniform, and Gotham is left without a hero.
1. Chapter 1

1

Radiant Wasp

(Book One)

The overly sized company trucks with the Wayne/Powers logo on the sides rolled covertly into the underbelly of Gotham City, the side of town ripe with every crime imaginable and unimaginable. Trash littered the streets: bottles, plastic bags, needles, wrappers, and condoms. Prostitutes from the underbelly crept through the area on warmer days, and they left needles, condoms, and every ungodly item for the kids to find. The city's trash crew went on a strike nearly six months ago over higher wages, and the trash piled up on the side of the road nearly six feet high in some places. The sanitation worker's strike crippled the city, and brought the wraith of the city government on the heads of the people who supported them. The city unleashed the water hoses on the strikers several times, and killed four people. The local prostitutes kept the strikers happy, and made a lot of money during the crisis. But since the strike ended, the prostitutes returned to hustling and stealing and doing whatever it took to make ends meet.

Jessica Hall, a vibrant young lady with deep brown, swarthy skin, braided hair, and wearing a black, Gothic like dress walked by the clandestine compound as the roaring trucks pulled into Cadmus. She had a stern look about her, and high cheekbones. No more than sixteen-years-old, she stood approximately five-foot-eight, but slender. She watched the swaying drums of contaminate on the back of the trucks closely, because it looked like they could fall off the beds of the trucks with the way they swayed back and forth. The drums of waste rattled because the driver didn't tie them down. When the economy crashed in twenty-twenty-five, the government fired all the inspectors who insured the drivers secured their drums of toxins. When the newly elected city council went into effect, they rescinded all laws regarding waste removal. Seedy corporations stored their biochemical and radioactive waste all over the poor parts of the city, and the cancer rates soared. The bitter wind blew wildly against Jessica's soft, brown face as she walked quietly on the other side of the street. She watched the trucks closely with the large, wobbly containers of radioactive canisters on the back, and feared of a possible spill if they didn't slow down. The flickering streetlights didn't brighten up anything on Fifth Street, as the trucks moved into the military facility that stood quietly most days of the week. Rumor had it that a clandestine government organization kept tabs on meta-humans, but that was only a rumor. She knew the compound contained a multitude of secrets, but she didn't know what those secrets were. Rumors and conjecture about the happenings on the compound raced through the community, but most of them were impossible to believe. Some people claimed the government built several clones of Superman, but they weren't viable; they died before they turned the age of two. She stood in front of the main gate, but had to focus hard to see the compound's lights in the distances.

The skyline of Gotham stood quietly for the last ten years without the ominous roar of the bat jet that flew overhead for many years, keeping a watchful eye over the city, but only the viable parts of the city. Crime was rampant. But since 2020, nobody had heard anything from the Batman. He disappeared after he saved a young girl in a high profile kidnapping, and nobody knew what happened to him after that highly publicized case. The criminals didn't move into the city immediately, but they gradually took hold of it by twenty-twenty-five. The Jokers played major ball with the cops, and had control of the crime in the underbelly. Most of the sophisticated aristocrats believed Batman to be dead, including Billionaire Bruce Wayne. Mister Wayne wrote an oped about Batman in Twenty Twenty-Seven titled "Good Riddance to the Bat." The entire community rallied against the image of the Batman after Mister Wayne assailed him, and tons of people in Gotham burned his images in the streets. The Jokers led mobs of miscreants into downtown Gotham, and hung Batman's image from the tallest building. The people spit venom at the man that kept crime at bay for so many years. The disrespect of the cape crusader disgusted the older generation.

It seemed irresponsible for the drivers not to tie down their drums of contaminate, and Jessica pulled out her cellphone, took a few pictures of the wobbly containers, and then posted them on her social page. Everybody knew if the city didn't demand businesses to be responsible, they wouldn't. She saw one of the drums of contaminate fall off the back of the last flatbed truck, and she started to run down the blackened street in order to escape the flying waste. She stopped running once she made it to the end of the block, but she wanted to see what was inside the canister, take a few pictures, and post them on her social page. She looked up at the skyline, and saw the moon creeping behind the thick, billowy clouds. She had an acute interest in chemistry that often got her into serious trouble with the authorities. She made several batches of meth when she was only ten years old by following a simple recipe she found on the Internet. She gave the batch to her fourth grade school teacher, Miss Harris, and she ended up losing her job because she had a system full of drugs on the quarterly drug test that year. Vengeful, she turned in Jessica to the police, and they raided the young girl's home for traces of the drugs, but didn't find anything. Her momma grounded her for sixth months over the incident.

Curious, Jessica darted back down the street where the dense, green liquid with an effervescent glow covered a small section of the dark roadway. A legion of red wasp flew over her head with their menacing stingers threatening her existence. She didn't know where the wasp came from because it was too cold for normal insects to be outside. The buzzing bugs dove into the greenish goo, and she backed away from the clump of wasp and grassy colored goo with adroit cautiousness. Stumbling, she fell to the ground, and the thump caused several of the mean spirited insects to attack her ferociously. One of the red devils stung her in the face, and she screamed in excruciating pain. The roar of her cry bounced from building to building, but nobody came to her rescue. Trembling, she continued to try to back away from the red savages, but they stung her repeatedly and without hesitation. It felt like the stinger hit her cheekbone, and it ignited a spark of pain that raced throughout her entire, svelte body. Lunging to her feet, she sprinted down the road, but two more feverish, venomous bugs stung her in the back of the neck. She tried to swat the nasty buggers as they flew through the air, but they were nimble—circumventing her every swing until they injected another load of radioactive sludge into her body. She had never felt so much harrowing pain in her entire life. The effects of the radioactive material in her body with the poison from the bugs caused her to feel sick. She retched repeatedly, but nothing happened. When she fell to the ground, she continued to heave, but nothing came up. Every time her body convulsed, it felt like her ribs would burst, and all she could do was scream, as loud as possible. Placing her right hand over her chest, she felt her heart palpitating wildly, and she began to sob loudly. Her vision blurred. The tears raced down her face, but none of the half curious people walking by her stopped to help. They stared. They pointed. They scoffed at her because the bubbles of puss forming on her face and back looked hideously uncouth. She looked monstrously deformed because of the deadly stings from the wasp. Instantly, she went from a young, prepubescent girl to Frankenstein's monster, and didn't have the ability to evade the sneers of the small crowd of people that gathered to scoff at her.

Jessica fell face down on the cold, grungy ground, but none of the people who walked by her offered to help. They laughed. Some of them even said, "It's people like that sponging off the hard working Americans that's killing this economy."

Due to the high crime, people grew cold towards each other, and nobody dared to offer a caring hand to a black girl. The majority of people probably thought she suffered from chronic drug use; and according to the popular rumors, most of Gotham's youth used drugs. She found enough strength in her puny muscles to crawl to the far side of the building. Flurries of bright snow began to drop on Gotham, and she knew that she needed to try to make it home before the flurries turned thick and deadly. Every year the news media reported on a slew of homeless people dying from Gotham's bitter winters. She knew the flurries would turn into a heavy snow, and that the temperatures would drop below zero. She had told herself repeatedly over the last several weeks that this Christmas break would be uneventful, but not now. It was the first day of her Christmas break, and death seemed imminent. Reaching in her coat pocket for her cell phone, she noticed it didn't have power; and if she didn't find help, she'd be just like her communication's device—dead. She knew she didn't have much juice left on her phone, but the pictures she took of the wobbly drums of contaminate used the little power she had left, and now death was close at hand.

It didn't take long for the heavy snow to creep into Gotham. It came down sideways, and stuck to everything it touched. Jessica lay against the stone building wrapped in her heavy coat, but it didn't help much. She held out her tongue for a moment in order to capture some of the snow, because for some reason she felt awfully thirsty. Looking up into the snowy sky, she didn't see an immediate end to the fluffy white stuff. The entire night sky looked white and cloudy—and dangerous. But when she looked at the manhole cover in the middle of the street, she noticed the snow didn't accumulate on it. She watched the steam emerging from the cover, and wondered if she could find temporary refuge underneath the shady city. She knew of the underbelly community that kept a shanty town underneath the city, and they would most likely have a heating source of some kind. But according to the rumors, the people beneath the streets indulged in every sin imaginable, including child sex trafficking.

But this was Fifth Street, a place where the Jokers had complete control. The miscreants called the Jokers marked every building in the area with their gang graffiti. And everybody knew—or should have known—the Jokers controlled the sewers beneath Fifth Street. They took indigent children beneath the streets, and sold them into sex slavery. The majority of the gang members who didn't become slaves joined as kids in order to escape a horrible childhood, but quickly grew into ruthless savages—preying on the weak of the city. But she couldn't think of the what-ifs, because if she didn't find safety soon, she'd die. She crawled over to the manhole, and nudged it enough until she slid the heavy steel lid off its base. The smell that emanated from the sewer made her feel sicker, but she could feel the warmth too. Focusing on the ladder, she slowly climbed down into the dark, dank hole, but used caution with each step.

She saw large rats treading through the dirty water, and they put some fear in her heart. She'd heard stories of the large, predatory rats beneath Gotham, but never took them to heart. The rodents were at least the size of large cats, and they floated through the water gathering food. When one of the nasty animals looked at her, it showed its teeth. She felt a little scared, but tried to ignore them in order to find a place where she could rest. For some reason her legs felt heavier than usual, and she had a hard time walking.

She hugged the sidewalls of the dirty tunnel, as she gingerly walked deeper into the warm delve. Labored breathing and holding her stomach as if it ached, she struggled to make it down the dark tunnel. She saw the source of the warm air when a stream of steamy smoke came out of the wall. The giant knot on her forehead throbbed, and she winced in excruciating pain, but she tried her best to ignore it. It felt as if the knot had its own heartbeat on her tender forehead. Every time she tried to feel the large bump, she pulled her hands away in agonizing pain. It leaked a bit of bloody puss onto her brown coat, and the infection smelled like rotten cabbage. She laid her shoulders against the wall, and sobbed with a loud roar. The infection oozing out of her face smelled worse than the smell emanating from the sewer. Hugging the wall, she tried her best to ignore the bump on her face. All she wanted to do was find a little solace in a small room or crevice in the tunnel, where she could die in peace.

She thought she had stepped into some kind of glue like substance, because her feet ceased to move. Every time she struggled to move her legs, it was nothing more than a good try. She couldn't move from her spot. At first, she thought she was going crazy because she didn't see anything impeding her from walking. Her brain told her to keep moving through the corridor, but her legs wouldn't obey. No matter how hard she tried, she didn't have the power to move her legs, and the sound of the steam exiting the wall caused her to flinch repeatedly. Every time she tried to move, it felt like gravity stopped her, but she didn't know why. She began to lament about all the things she didn't do with her short life, but didn't let her tears keep her from struggling to walk. When she looked down at her legs one more time, a molted film engulfed half her body. It seeped through her pants, and had a crystal like appearance to it. She tried to tear a chunk of the substance off her legs, but she couldn't break it. The sting of the radioactive wasp stole her strength. It looked like some kind of cocoon coming from the pores of her skin, but she wasn't sure. The tingle she felt in her legs raced up to her hands; and when she took a glance at her fingers, the cocoon like substance engulfed her digits until her hands looked like warm, wintery mittens. It scared her. The puss filled knot on her head started pulsating rapidly, and then a stream of white, bloody puss flew all over the wall immediately in front of her. She couldn't believe that much goo came from her head, but it did. She fell against the bloody, white mess, and more of the molted substance came out of her skin until it enclosed her inside of it. Within minutes, she looked like a gigantic crystal cocoon without any form whatsoever. She was nothing more than a pile of biological goo stuck to the wall.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Farther down the dark, dank corridor, a group of people—mostly women and kids—sat in a raggedy shanty town made up of stitched together tattered tents. The multicolored panels on each of the tents gave them an aged appearance, but the old army shelters kept the occupants comfortable on the coldest nights of the year. Several of the young girls sewed more panels onto the dwellings in order to cover up the holes. The people were situated in a large, commodious room the size of a gymnasium with a stream of sewer water running through it. The sewers of Gotham were no different from life in a third-world nation, and the people who lived in the trenches knew the horrors of hell. Society's abused and battered children, young and old, fed on the trash of the wealthy, and they had grown accustomed to dysfunction. The mouths of catfish came to the surface of the greenish brown water in order to nibble on the bugs, garbage, and whatever else they could find, including the feces. Some of the fish were massive—bigger than two hundred pounds. The catfish had a tendency to snap on to the rats, and feast on them too ; they were vicious. The downtrodden of society made the spacious room in the sewer their home, and some of the people had lived underground for over twenty years. The community was nothing more than a group of survivalists willing to do anything to live. Several of the small kids in tattered, barely fitting clothes used dented, metal cups to hold the contaminated water. Some of the cups they used to scoop the septic water out of the greenish looking river were forged from soda pop cans. The septic water was nothing more than the untreated waste from the people that lived directly above them. They took the septic water over to the powerful machine that stood in the middle of the room that turned the abscessed water into viable drinking water. It turned septic water into aseptic water, and kept the communicable diseases down to a minimum. The machine stretched to the ceiling, generated heat, and had a large hose attached to it that went directly into the water. Unfortunately, the pump that sucked the water directly from the reservoir hadn't worked for over two years, and the women didn't have the ability to fix it. This meant they used the dirty sewer water to bathe or they used the showers attached to some truck stop in order to clean their bodies. Surprisingly, none of the sewer dwellers took ill because of the dirty water, but sexually transmitted diseases happened often, even the kids weren't immune to them. Everybody earned their keep in the community, and that keep meant engaging in sex, drugs, or both. One of the older women passed some dried bread to an older lady with extremely wrinkled neck skin, and she tore off a small piece of it. Overall, the woman had a smooth face, but her neck looked more like a turkey's neck. It had so many wrinkles that it distracted from her soft, innocent looking face. After that, the loaf of bread went around the room with each woman and child breaking off a small chunk. The dried bread was barely edible, but none of the pitiable people of the shanty town complained about the condition of the food. The majority of the residents had the emaciated look of drug users because all of them made and used meth at any given time. It was the drug of choice for most of Gotham's underbelly. A small group of women sat against the far wall with a long, tubular pipe, a lighter, and a small meth rock that they lit repeatedly. They sucked on the end of the tube until their eyes rolled into the back of their heads. It was a horrible site, but a normal site nonetheless. Babies paced back and forth in front of the meth users, giggling. The kids usually gathered stale bread from generous restaurants that didn't lock their trash bins at night. They pretended to play dice games in the back of the restaurants, and waited for the workers to toss discarded food into the bins. The workers familiar with the horrid conditions of the shanty towns dropped the old boodle in the bins for the children to swipe in the middle of the night. Several of the restaurants had security cameras and a few signs to warn the children about pilfering through the trash, but nobody complained. The kids that went on patrols knew exactly where to go for the bread stuff, and they didn't hesitate to commandeer anything edible for the community. They'd search through the large trash bins for meat, chips, or anything they could use to feed the other children in the shanty town. When the children had plenty to eat, it kept them from disturbing the elders of the community. Each member of the group ate quietly next to their tents—never looking up from their plates of food.

For a city with so much wealth, it was hard to believe that so many poor people lived beneath it with barely enough food to eat. There probably was approximately two hundred tents that made up the quaint, little shanty town. And the majority of people in the community bathed in the waste of the people with enough money to live on the surface of the city. When the highs dissipated, the women often whined about the riches of the surface dwellers ; and when they prostituted, some of them stole from their johns. They made no apologies for their actions. Cora Suay, a middle-aged woman with short, woolly hair, dark skin, and ashy arms watched a large rat as it swam towards the group of people. It had red, little bugged eyes that she despised, but she knew the larger rats made good eating when prepared correctly. If she didn't snag the nasty rodent, the catfishes would swoop in and steal it from her. Everybody in the shanty town ate the ubiquitous rodents in order to control their population. The disease spreading animals lived in every crack and crevice of the underground community, and often stole the bit of edible food they kept hidden inside their tents. She held on to a silver throwing knife, and kept a keen eye on the rodent. Her son Ronnie—approximately twelve-years-old—sat beside her, and wrote in his journal about his day. Writing in his diary was the only way for him to escape the horrors of living underneath the city of Gotham. He didn't spend much time hanging with the other kids, but he liked an Asian girl named Vivian. Whenever he wasn't with a customer, he liked to spend time talking to Vivian about being a big shot on the surface some day. He once told her that the entire world would know his name before he turned eighteen, and utter it in order to express their coolness. Basically, he told her he'd become the next legend of Gotham. When his mother gingerly raised the throwing knife in the air, he stopped writing in his journal for a moment. Stoned face and calm, she watched the rodent with the eyes of a hawk. The rest of the community continued to gab, but not Ronnie because he knew she needed to focus. He knew if she missed the rat that it would be a second full day of nothing but bread and lowly insects ; and with the snow falling profusely, the Jokers probably wouldn't come by to hire him to escort some of the most influential men in town. When the rat leaped from the water, Cora's knife flew through the air, and sliced the rodent into two pieces. The rat screamed for half a second, and then went completely quiet. It didn't move or show any signs of life. Cora knew how to use a knife, and it didn't matter the prey: man or beast. The bloody animal fell into two piles on the ground, and Ronnie recovered the pieces quickly in order to prepare them for eating.  
Ronnie's abuser—Mister Leener—came by about once a week to take him out to eat, and then straight to his house to play games on the video console. Mister Leener told Ronnie occasionally that he didn't like boys over thirteen, and his days of taking his money were coming to an end. The Jokers arranged the lascivious meetings, and collected all the monies from the illicit escorts that happened in Gotham's underbelly. The Jokers paid a meager wage to the children for their escort services, and all interactions with the Johns remained a secret. The majority of Johns were imprudent when it came to the sewer residents. When a sewer resident complained about their conditions, nobody listened ; and when a resident of the underbelly of Gotham ended up missing or dead, the cops didn't make an attempt to investigate. Cora received some benefits for agreeing to allow her son to see Mister Leener, and that was protection from Child Services. He knew his Momma cried every time he went with the dirty, old man, but the Jokers were demanding when it came to making money. Dollars and morality didn't belong in the same sentence, and the Jokers didn't care for complaining either. It was better to perform the sexually illicit task than to complain about it. Over the last few months, several kids went missing, but the Gotham Police Department didn't investigate. The majority of men who participated in exploiting the poor children who lived underneath the city were in high positions in society. "Help me clean this rat ?" Cora asked with a grimace on her dark skinned face. She gave one half of the animal to Ronnie. " All that writing isn't going to help you, boy. "

"It's how I cope, " he said with a soft sounding voice. He took a thin, pearl handled folding knife out of his tattered, right pants pocket, and removed the guts from the poor animal. It wasn't his first time cleaning a rat with his Momma, but he was surprised at the size of it. Before his Momma's throwing knife sliced it into two pieces, it had to be nearly four feet long. When he finished cleaning the animal, he took a long pause, and then wiped the guts onto his tattered pants legs. After that, he folded the knife, stuck it in his front right pant's pocket, and pushed the cleaned animal over to his Momma to season. He kept the knife in his pocket for more than cleaning food, but protection. He was only around twelve-years-old, but he had seen the damage an abusive handler could do to a kid ; and as long as he lived underneath the city, he had no recourse if his handler changed for the worse. He didn't know if Mister Leener ever brutally raped or killed a kid, but some members of the city council made a habit of it. Influential businessmen, politicians, and some well-to-do citizens of Gotham formed the Pedophilia Libertine Society ( PLS ) , and the society had financial backing because the majority of members were the wealthy elite of Gotham. Ronnie heard Mister Leener refer to the members of that society in a negative manner, but he knew the old guy had enough money to enter the group. Some of the members enjoyed little boys while other members enjoyed fellowship with little girls. But by the time a child reached the age of sixteen, the PLS no longer desired those kids. This meant that the kid resorted to making drugs for cash or setting up arrangements between younger kids and wealthy people involved in pedophilic behavior. "Why don't you go explore ?" His Momma asked as she removed the fur off her half of the over sized rodent. Several women from other tents started up the standing grills, and waited for her to finish seasoning the rat. The standing grills stood about five feet high, green, and aligned the far walls. When the food cooked, the smell reverberated throughout the tunnels. Whatever the other residents of the shanty town had found to eat, they threw it on the grill, including bugs of all types and a couple small catfishes. Some of the ladies set a bucket of vegetables on the ground in front of the grill in order to roast them. The same lamps used to grow marijuana gave life to some of the greenest and tastiest vegetables in Gotham. Some of the women said the richness of Gotham's waste gave life to some of the best vegetables on the planet. Sometimes they had a good harvest of vegetables while other times the tunnels of Gotham didn't produce anything.

Quietly, Ronnie walked down the dark tunnel with a small flashlight in order to avoid any of the viscous rats that lived in every crevice of the sewer. They usually made a significant splash in the water, but he didn't hear anything as he walked down the dark tunnel. The smell of the rat cooking on the grill flooded the hallway, and he wondered if he'd get a bite before Dennis, a Joker, came by. Dennis was the liaison who setup most of the illicit, sexual encounters for about twelve kids, and two of the kids lived in the Fifth Street Sewer. Ronnie traveled over to the pod that had fastened itself to the wall, and sat down beside it on the ledge. He didn't realize that a human life form existed on the inside of the cocoon, but he did enjoy the heat emanating from it. The journal stuck out of his side right pocket slightly, and he pulled it out in order to finish writing his entry for the day. The first entry for the day was about the kid Markus who went missing last week after a visit to his abuser's home. Ronnie knew that he wasn't suppose to speak or write about the secret relationships between the sewer kids and the PLS, but he made journal entries every time Mister Leener touched him. The Joker who arranged the meetings said that Ronnie's Momma would vanish if he didn't make enough money or ever told about the city officials who had fetishes for young boys. He never had an urge to voice complaints about the sexual encounters until Markus's headless, black body surfaced in Lake Gotham.  
Dennis made a concerted effort with his minions to take as many pictures of Markus's headless body after the cops found it, but he also made a point to say he wasn't involved in the boy's death. But on the other hand, he made it a factor to tell the kids of the sewer that none of them were exempt from Markus ' fate. It instilled fear in most of the sewer urchins, but Ronnie didn't let the braggart bother him. Killing Dennis was one of his best dreams.  
The pedophilia in Gotham had reached an all time high, and the moral compass of society had waned. The good that once echoed through the streets of the dark city died nearly a decade ago, and nobody had the ingenuity, class or willingness to take The Batman's place. Death became the symbol of freedom in the dark city ; and without a stable source of wealth, an early death was highly probable. Mister Leener was Judge Leener to the people who sat in his courtroom, and Ronnie's momma faced him on several occasions for petty, nonviolent crimes. Quickly, Ronnie realized in order to keep his momma out of prison, he had to sacrifice his childhood whenever the chance arose because the smallest defiance meant prison time for his momma.  
" Ronnie, you ready ?" A voice asked as it approached him out of the darkness.  
" Who's that ?" Ronnie asked. He placed his diary into a small crevice in the wall, and then flashed the light in the direction of the Joker. He had an idea of who it might be, but couldn't tell because it was so dark in the tunnel. "Don't put the light in my eyes, boy, " the dark figure snapped.  
" Oh. It's you, Dennis, " Ronnie said with a look of relief on his face. He didn't care too much for Dennis, because he mediated the meetings with the abusers, but the councilmen feared the young Joker. Dennis was probably twenty-five or twenty-six years old with a hideous scar on the left side of his neck. The scar gorgonized any onlooker because it told a viscous story, a story of survival. Whenever Ronnie looked at Dennis's hideous wound, he turned to stone ; it scared him. Dennis once resided in the sewers too, but left when he turned sixteen. Everybody knew that he killed the man that sexually molested him for five years at one of the Libertine parties, but not without cause. Dennis kept a small blade in his pants pocket, and his molester cut Dennis ' throat in the boiler room of the building. According to Dennis, he was fifteen at the time he attended his last Libertine party, and they had him dressed in a flowery tuxedo. He didn't realize how badly the old man cut his neck until the blood dripped onto his flowery tuxedo. He called the suit the gayest suit on the planet. He would have ended up like Markus, but Dennis fought back against his abuser. With the blood dripping down his neck, he pulled out his small knife, and stabbed the man nearly thirty times in the gut. The cops tried to throw Dennis underneath the jail because he killed a high dollar attorney named Randolph Gibson. But when the law enforcement officials found a stash of illicit videos online of Mister Gibson brutally molesting Dennis, they dropped the charges. It became a case of self defense, and Dennis walked away with his freedom. But like most of the kids who grew up in the sewers, he found a way to exploit the other kids. He not only sold drugs, but he prostituted all the kids in the Fifth Street sewer. He even knows about the guy who killed Markus, but he hasn't blabbed the killer's name yet. He used Markus's murder as a tool to control the other sewer urchin ; and when Ronnie thought hard about Dennis's abuse, he thought one day I'll kill him.  
The majority of men with fetishes for young boys held high positions in the city of Gotham. They might be business men or high ranking city officials or professors from Gotham City University, or even a cop on the take. In any case, the men had money and influence who preyed on the boys of the sewer or ( BOTS ) . He always told the abusers to return the boys without any bruises ; and when Dennis talked to the business men, they usually listened. Ronnie didn't know how a person as skinny and frail looking as Dennis had so much power and influence in the world of business, but he told them exactly how it had to be. "It's time to make a little money, " the Joker said with a smirk on his face. He looked chiseled like a body builder, but extremely skinny at the same time. His stare was cold and commanding, and Ronnie did exactly what he was told to do. Dennis looked over at the pod, and asked, " What's that ?" Ronnie started to walk away, and then the Joker said, " Slow down, boy. You know I have a new guy for you today ?"  
"What happen to Mister Leener ?" He asked with a soft voice. He walked in front of Dennis, and he heard the Joker's foot steps catching up to him.  
" Decided to lie low since Markus's demise, " he said with a chuckle, " Those dirty old men get a little jittery when a child ends up murdered … especially the judges. "  
The child waited for the Joker to catch up with him, and then they climbed out of the sewer into the snowy streets. The snow shut down the city, and the only thing active was the snow trucks trying to clear a path for the morning commuters. Humongous snow flakes continued to fall rapidly to the ground, and it looked as if the snow wasn't planning on stopping anytime soon. The thick snow covered everything in sight, and blew almost sideways at times. Dennis squinted as the cold, fluffy stuff beat against his skinny, scared face. He helped pull Ronnie through the manhole, and pointed to the man in the yellow, quietly running SUV. It was a mid-size, battery SUV that had the ability to fly. Several new line of cars had the ability of flight, but the government hadn't worked out all the rules concerning flight, and they expected to make it completely legal by twenty-thirty-two. The buildings were so high, so close to each other that everything seemed cramped. Without question, Ronnie climbed into the vehicle on the passenger side, and Dennis tapped on the driver's side window for the man to roll it down. The Joker kept his hands into his pocket because of the frigid cold weather, and hopped up and down to try to keep warm.  
" Listen, I don't care what kind of exploitive nastiness you have in mind for the boy … just make sure you bring him back alive, " he said, " Can't afford another death this soon. "  
The driver rolled up the driver's side window on Dennis ' face, and he had to pull back so the rolling window didn't catch his fingers. Dennis gave the man a bitter look that resembled an angry scowl. A rumor of Dennis killing more than one person in the elite society had circulated in the sewers, but nobody had confirmed it. The ladies loved to talk about things they didn't know anything about, and that was how Ronnie took it. The women in the sewer talked about things that they heard from other people, and some of it had some truth to it, but most of it was hogwash. Walking away from the SUV, the Joker snarled and stuck his hands in his coat pocket, walked away from the vehicle with his head down, grimacing. " That dirt bag doesn't know I'll kill him, " he whispered, " I'll kill every last one of them. "  
Ronnie barely had the willpower to stare the heavyset city councilman in the face because of the massive pits in it. The man suffered from bad skin that made his face look like dried out mud or a white, cotton shirt found crumpled at the bottom of the clothes hamper. He looked chalk white and corpulent. It was late in the evening around nine o'clock, but the old man apparently was dressed for the night life. He wore a black, loosely fitting suit with a metal button that had the picture of a nude child on it. The center of the button had " Libertine " written in white letters. He wasn't the same pedophile that Ronnie had in the past, but one nonetheless. The other child rapist had a gentler appearance, and more often than not showered Ronnie with bags of gifts before any illicit encounter. When Ronnie received rewards for his actions, it made the rapes bearable, at least on some level. "My name is Mister Hamilton, " the old, fat guy said with a snarky look on his face. " You'll call me Mister Hamilton … understand ?"  
"Yes, sir. "  
Ronnie realized immediately that Mister Hamilton was the strong authoritarian type ; and in addition to that, he had a love of guns. The back seat of the SUV had several hand guns and two high powered rifles in it.  
" I see you noticed my guns ?" Mister Hamilton asked with a smirk. " You disobey me, and I'll shot you. " He laughed. Ronnie gave him an evil stare, and then turned his attention to the snow.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Dedra Hall watched the snowfall profusely out of her living room window with the hope that her precious daughter would make it home before noon. The first thing she did that very morning was to check her daughter's room for any sign of the poor child, but nothing. She placed her hand on her perfectly made bed with the tiger embroidered picture on it, and felt a burst of fear rush through her body. She looked at Jessica's sketch art of butterflies that she had in frames on the wall above her neatly made bed, and wondered where her daughter could be. Nothing had changed in the room from the previous night. She spent hours pacing the living room floor until she fell asleep on the couch for a few hours. Frustrated, she made several failed attempts to call her daughter's cellphone, but it went straight to voice mail. At first, she thought her daughter deliberately turned off her cellphone, but she quickly squelched that idea in her mind. When she walked past the brown coffee table that she laid in front of the leather couch, she stubbed her toe on the corner. "Dammit!" Now it was one of the coldest mornings of the year, and the snow had covered her car completely, and came up midway on the living room window. Picking up the cellphone off the table, she held it with an aggressively tight grip in the hopes that her daughter would call, but she hadn't received one call or text the entire night. Jessica had been missing for nearly eighteen hours, and she couldn't locate her using a tracking device on her phone. Dedra didn't hesitate to put a tracking device on her daughter's phone because Gotham had too many odious characters in its mist. Children went missing all the time, and some of the people at the hospital where she worked as a nurse talked about an elite group of men that kept a community of sex slaves hidden beneath the city. The residents of Gotham had seen small children used in a salacious manner, but turned the other way because it was customary not to get involved. Nobody wanted to take responsibility for the children who lived in the sewers of Gotham. The surface dwellers made a lucrative game of preying on the subsurface dwellers, and nobody cared. Nearly eighty thousand kids lived under the city at any given time, and more ended up homeless every day. Nearly every spacious room in the sewers that stretched across Gotham had shanty towns, and Dedra made sure her daughter never associated with those people. She didn't live in a large house, but it had all the amenities she needed: stove, central heat and air, computer, refrigerator, running water, and so on. Like most of the homes in Gotham, she had two personal computers that set in the far corner of the living room and one in Jessica's bedroom, but did the majority of her communications through a mobile, black tablet computer that she had attached to her waist. In most homes in Gotham, a family had more tablet computers than individuals to use them because new books were sold on a replete tablet PC. One of the amenities of the house was a red button next to the front door with the word "Deicer" above it. She pushed the red button, and the snow slowly melted in the front yard. It took only a few hours for the snow to turn into water, and give her the freedom she needed to go to work. The thought of her daughter being sold into sex slavery crossed her mind, but it wasn't her worse thought. She feared something might have activated her dormant meta-human powers. The fear of her clandestine powers surfacing without warning scared her immensely. She thought of her daughter's hidden powers as meta-human instead of what Jessica really was in the scheme of powerful beings throughout the universe. Jessica was a direct descendant of a race of gods that existed in an alternative universe on her father's side. Her human DNA made the process of transforming into a Titan, an ugly endeavor because of the cocooning process. It took an outside force to initiate her cocooning phase; and then after that, she would grow in strength and other abilities. She'd see the world differently as she grew in strength and power too. Unfortunately, the path of good and evil wasn't clear. Her father—Derrick Hall—possessed a magical glove called "The Glove of Darkness" that gave him the ability to walk between universes, influence people's will, and essentially kill enemies. After he went through the pain of the cocooning process, "The Glove of Darkness" called to him like a sea nymph in the night. No matter how much a person of his race tried to block the call of the glove, it overwhelmed their every desire. Unfortunately, he gave up fighting crime, returned "The Glove of Darkness" to his people, and took refuge in the Celestial Kingdom—the only place that minimized his desire for the glove. He had a horrendous battle in the Gray Universe against their Superman. That Superman was evil and petty; and when Derrick confronted him about his cruel behavior, a fight ensued. Once Derrick used the glove to make Superman feel all his sins, it empowered the Man of Steel. He grew stronger from all the pain that he caused his world, and went on a killing spree that took out entire nations on the Gray Earth. Angered, Derrick returned to the Gray Universe in order to remove the evilness from power, and he did. Unfortunately, the battle nearly destroyed Derrick's will to live, and the glove tried to force him to become the new ruler on the Gray Earth. When Derrick resisted the glove's power, it forced him into a lamenting phase that caused him to travel to the Celestial Kingdom for rest. It didn't take him long to realize that the Celestial Kingdom was his only solace against the will of the glove. She wanted to keep her daughter from knowing her heritage because possession of "The Glove of Darkness" came with its own set of problems. When her husband possessed the glove, she never knew if he controlled the glove or if the glove somehow controlled him. The glove came with its on set of moral values that didn't necessarily mesh with society's values. The glove had the ability to carry out its own brand of justice that sometimes included complete annihilation of the target. The glove frightened Dedra because with one touch, a few words, and the glove could make an individual face all their demons. It was enough to tear the strongest of beings apart. The cocooning process would take close to a week; and then after that, she'd be almost impervious to most outside forces. But at the same time, she'd feel a longing for "The Glove of Darkness" because the desire to have it was an innate calling. She'd feel incomplete without the glove—almost a feeling of madness. Regardless of her situation, her birthright would eventually happen, and she'd be an uncontrollable force of nature. Dedra looked out the window at the falling snow, and wondered if she did the right thing about keeping her daughter in the dark about her heritage. It was her prerogative to keep her sweet daughter out of the crazy world of superpowers. She wanted to warn her about the cocooning, but didn't know how to tell her. It was highly probable to initiate the cocooning using certain medicines, but she chose not to do it. In any case, she didn't fear Jessica's birthright; she feared "The Glove of Darkness." Dedra went into her attic, rummaged through hundreds of Derrick's journals, and found the one about cocooning that she needed in order to find out where her daughter might be. When Derrick podded, he went into a secure location in his school's boiler room that had somewhat of a steamy atmosphere. Unfortunately, Gotham had tons of buildings with steamy boiler rooms, and her search would seem endless, especially in the deep, unending snow. Even though she deiced her yard and the city of Gotham did an admirable job at clearing the main streets, the neighborhood streets more often than not were impassable. The bus would have dropped her off about a mile away near Fifth Street, and the majority of the buildings in that area were vacant. However, the sewers beneath Fifth Street would most likely have the dampness and warmth needed for the cocooning, she thought. Frustrated, she did a lackluster job at cleaning the snow off her car, but cleared enough of the thick, white stuff to see out the driver's window. The deicer melted most of the snow in her yard, and gave her the ability to at least drive the car into the middle of the street where other cars had trudged out a path. The machines piled tons of snow on the side of roads, and Fifth Street was completely cleared of the snow and ice. She didn't hesitate to climb into the dark sewer, and quickly walked towards the lump of biological mass attached to the wall. She placed her hands on the cocoon, and could feel the life form on the inside of it. It was the first time that she had seen an actual cocoon, but knew what to expect because her husband drew a picture of it in his journal. "I should have warned you of this," she said with a whisper. "Your life will forever be changed, baby." She sat beside the pod, pulled out her tablet computer, and took a picture of the cocoon. At first, she felt a bit of relief knowing that her daughter was safe; but at the same time, she felt distraught knowing the pain she'd endure trying to control her powers. She'd need a lot of patience, a bit of grace, and as much eloquence as possible to control the pain of being a descendant of gods. The structure of the pod looked more like a gigantic pea pod except it was dark brown. According to Derrick's notes, the pod would be tan when the rebirth happened. Derrick wrote that the occupant of the pod wouldn't be oblivious to the outside world, and it was important to be careful not to speak ill of it. It would take approximately four more days for Jessica's rebirth, and she'd need plenty of food upon her arrival.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Mister Hamilton had closets full of clothes that fit Ronnie perfectly. Ronnie knew that Mister Hamilton took great pleasure in abusing little boys because he had a house full of entertainment for the kids that included video games, a virtual reality room, candies, cakes, an indoor swimming pool, and a lot of sweets. For some reason, he had some kind of fascination with suits that Ronnie didn't understand. There were several, short suit sets with matching bow ties, pants suit sets, and they all looked very expensive, but overly gaudy. Ronnie never had nice things in his entire life. All he knew was the shantytown, moldy bread, and rat meat dinners. He dreaded the entire ride to Mister Hamilton's place during dinnertime, because he missed out on the rat cuisine his Momma prepared. Over time, a person grew fond of the foods he ate the most, and he had an affinity for wild rat meat and catfish. To a surface dweller, a cuisine of wild rodent meats and bottom feeding fish like catfish probably disgusted them, but Ronnie didn't mind those lowly foods. He liked what he liked. Not even Mister Hamilton's moist chocolate cake squelched his desire for his dinner meal of grill rodent meat and vegetables that grew underneath indoor lights for clandestine marijuana plants. He pretended to enjoy the cake, but he didn't want to upset a customer, a customer with wealth. He choked down the chocolate cake, but had a desire for his wild rodent meat. After he ate the cake, Mister Hamilton bathed the boy with a hard bristled brush that reddened his brown, pecan colored skin, and caused a few abrasions on his upper back. Ronnie realized quickly that the old man had issues that surrounded cleanliness. Mister Hamilton looked more like a construction worker, but he owned several high dollar furniture stores throughout Gotham and Metro City. He wore a blue, decorative robe with his last name stitched across the back. "Wash your face good, boy," Mister Hamilton demanded, "I want the smell of that god-awful sewer off you."

Grimacing, Ronnie took the towel, rubbed his face as hard as he could, and then showed the white, face towel to Mister Hamilton. "No more dirt left."

"Good … good," he said with a whisper. Mister Leener didn't care too much for cleanliness like Mister Hamilton did. He seemed to have some kind of fetish with having the sewer erased from Ronnie's body; so, it took over an hour for the bath to take place. Ronnie spent nearly an hour washing between his toes, his backside, between his legs, under his arms, and his neck repeatedly. That wasn't the order of body parts he washed, but he hit every crevice on his body once, twice, thrice, …, until Mister Hamilton gave the "All done." The round, decorative bathtub with images of nude men chiseled into the marble had jet streams, a heater, and bubbles that entertained him. Whenever Mister Hamilton scrubbed him with the brush, he flinched because the bristles scratched his delicate skin. His knife was in his tattered pant's pockets that lay on the floor, and he felt somewhat uneasy with the strange man touching him all over. The large television screen above the bathtub covered the entire wall, and he watched cartoons on it. All the things that Ronnie liked was at his fingertips, and the foods were truly enjoyable. Mister Hamilton climbed into the bathtub, and Ronnie exited the tub, dried off with a towel, and watched a little television on a stool next to the tub. Under orders, he took the thick, oddly shaped bristled brush shaped more like the male's genitalia than a brush, and raked it across Mister Hamilton's hairy back. "I don't like this...," Ronnie said with a grimace on his face.

"You're a service," Mister Hamilton snapped. "You're bought and paid for until tomorrow." Mister Hamilton slid open a drawer attached to the tub, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and started to smoke. "So, you scrub my back until I'm tired. Understand?" "Yes, sir!" The smell of the cigarettes caused him to cough and squint his eyes, but he managed to wash the man's hairy back. He wondered if the slaves had to wash the bodies of their masters. And if they did, it meant they didn't even receive a meager wage for it. Ronnie washed every inch of the man's back; and from the hairy water, he removed a lot of the man's hair too. It looked painful. The man's apartment had marble floors with several Greek like statues of nude men that met them at the entrance. Ronnie had never experienced opulence in his entire life, and he enjoyed drinking juice from a silver chalice and eating chocolates off a silver platter. After the awkward bath and the berating, he put on a white suit that fit him perfectly. It came with a little bow tie that made him look officially silly. Unfortunately, the old, fat man put a black collar on his neck, and Ronnie gave him a weird look of disapproval.

"Don't worry about it," Mister Hamilton said, "All the little boys will have them."

"Collars? Where's this?" Ronnie asked because Dennis didn't warn him about this. At the age of twelve, he didn't care to be treated like a dog, and the whole idea of the collar disgusted him. The majority of Libertines didn't think the sewer people had a moral compass, but Ronnie did. He had his limits, and the collar pushed him to the edge.

"At the Christmas Party," he said, "All the boys will have collars." When they arrived to the Christmas party in the Concord Hotel, Ronnie didn't expect to see so many men with little boys. Since he was twelve, he was one of the older kids compared to the rest of them. Across the floor, he saw Vivian with her escort, and he was a thinning haired white man who picked her up almost every Monday. She sat at the table on the far end of the room, and Ronnie noticed that she wore a thin, diamond encrusted collar that looked very expensive. He had put a coat of makeup on her face that almost made her look like a Joker's girl. The thick eye shadow made her eyes look sharper and the red lipstick gave her mouth the appearance of a vagina. Vivian had turned thirteen last month, and Ronnie bought her a strawberry cake and a card with some of his money he kept hidden in a secret place in the tunnel. She said that she enjoyed the cake, but she lamented about being a teenage whore most of the night. Ronnie listened, gave her a shoulder to cry on, and sang a lullaby that he heard once on an old television show. He didn't realize that a culture of men existed in Gotham who preyed on the innocent kids of the underbelly, and he was nothing but a tool of that culture. When Ronnie walked into the banquet room, he noticed all the Christmas ornaments on the tables with two small Christmas trees on each table. Every table had a ton of candies on top it for the children to devour. He liked the chocolate mints more than all the other candies on the table; so, as soon as he sat down at his table, he pocketed several of the delicious confections. And just like Mister Hamilton said, all the kids wore fancy white or black dress clothes with black or white collars, and they all looked like perfect dolls. Vivian had on a white dress that made her look like the perfect China doll, and she sat on her escort's lap. Ronnie couldn't bear to look at her as she entertained her escort. An endless amount of food that looked more like an extravagant buffet surrounded the entire room. Young men of different types and colors without shirts stood behind the tables of food, and served people as much food as they wanted to eat. Some of the men were already devouring their meals at the tables, and they would go back to the buffet to stack up on more food every time their trays emptied. He recognized a kid named Benny Lo, Vivian's brother, who lived in the shantytown with him, and he stood in the far corner quietly. Benny was at least a third generation Asian kid, but his father died when he was around three, and his momma didn't have the skills needed to find steady employment. Vivian probably was no older than a few months old when her father died. Joblessness was the curse of the underbelly, and nobody in the shantytown had a legitimate job. Ronnie's Momma often told him that poverty didn't wash off with soap and water; it wore off after having a generation of wealth. When Ronnie walked over to talk to him, Benny looked at him with his cold, almond shaped eyes, and lamented about being raped repeatedly before he arrived to the banquet. This would most likely be Benny's last year to attend the Libertine Festival because he was sixteen. "They're going to rape us tonight, Ronnie," he said with a soft voice. Sometimes kids scare each other for fun, but he wasn't funning when he warned Ronnie of the possibility that the grown men would ravish his body, and possibly infect him with a disease.

"How do you know?" Ronnie asked.

"'Cause I attended this thing last year," he said, "If you can leave, leave."

"Maybe we can both leave?" Ronnie said in an asking kind of fashion. Worried, Ronnie retreated to the other side of the room, and monitored the front entrance. Two large guards in black tuxedos stood watching the entrance for any intruders, and they made escape almost impossible. Inquisitively, Ronnie glanced over at the guards as they stood at parade rest, and wondered if he could trick them into letting him outside. Unfortunately, he knew the snow continued to fall and the temperature was well below freezing. So, he wondered if he should take his chances with the potential orgy or suffer through the elements. Ronnie walked over to Vivian, as she ate some kind of white bagel with an orange dipping sauce. The way her white dress clung to her petite frame, he could see that her womanly parts had started to develop. She had the look of a child, but started to develop into a woman. When she realized he stood beside her, she had an uncomfortable look on her face. Sheepishly, she turned away from him, and said, "Don't look at me. I'm just a cheap whore."

"Aren't we all whores?" He asked with a grimace on his face. "You'll always be my favorite."

She looked up at him with her almond shaped eyes, and asked, "Promise?"

He smiled. "I'm going to leave," he said with a whisper. He had a serious look on his face, and she looked as if he said something truly horrible.

"Leave? You'll forfeit your duties," she said with a scowl on her round face. "What's the first rule, Ronnie?"

"Money over comfort," he said, "But..."

"You know the consequences," she said, "But don't ask me to break the rules, and risk my family's life."

Ronnie placed his left hand on the back of her neck, and then walked across the room to his seat. Even though Vivian repeated the rules of the game to him, he didn't want all the men in the room using him like a piece of meat. When Ronnie looked across the floor at Vivian, he watched a tall Asian man grab her by the collar, take her to a back room, and Ronnie didn't dare imagine what was happening at that point. He felt a deep pain in his heart, and he could barely contain himself. He knew what happened in those rooms, but he had an attachment to Vivian. Mister Hamilton had started devouring his meal, and people had made several speeches about the passing of laws that allowed for men child relationships for the good of society. An aristocrat with a beard walked into the room with one white boy and one black girl between the ages of ten and thirteen on collars. The black girl wore a white dress and the white boy had on a black suit. The little boy had a bruise on his left cheek, and Ronnie wondered if the man had beaten him. The two kids weren't from his sewer, but probably lived in one of the other sewers throughout Gotham. Within an hour, Ronnie counted nearly eighty naïve little boys and girls in tuxedos and dresses with a look of innocents on their faces. The majority of them had already grabbed their meals, started eating, and had a look of serenity on their faces. The seating arrangements was a child, adult, and another child throughout the entire room. The majority of kids lived in some sewer in Gotham, and he recognized nearly ten boys and eight girls from his own shantytown.

Benny's abuser looked younger than most of the pedophiles in the entire room, but he didn't smile or take any of the candies off the table or show any emotion whatsoever. He seemed indifferent to what was going on in the room. His abuser turned to him, kissed him on the mouth, and then punched him in the arm. Ronnie turned away from the violence, and tried to remove the horrors of the imminent orgy out of his mind. Vivian returned to her seat, and apparently the Asian guy left reddish marks on her neck. Her ordinary escort took the Asian man into the hallway, and exchanged some words about her marked up neck. Even though the man showed legitimate concerns about Vivian, he didn't trust him. If he cared for her, she wouldn't be attending a party where grown men raped children. There was no such thing as a good man that allowed for other grown ups to molest children. A short, balding man in his late forties named Mister Green stood at the podium with a blue banner above his head that read, "Boy Love." A tiny tot no more than seven or eight stood by his side without saying a word. The old man started taking off his clothes one item at a time, and a few of the men took off clothes in the crowd. Ronnie looked over at Mister Hamilton, and said, "I need to go the bathroom." He had a look of worry on his face, because Mister Green took off all his clothes at the podium, and tossed them to the ground. Suddenly, the majority of the men in the room stripped naked in an almost ritualistic fashion.

He replied with a grimace, "Hurry up." He wiped his mouth with a white towel, threw it on the table, and shooed the boy with the flick up his left hand. "Don't make me come after you in there either. You're missing the best part."

"Yes, sir," Ronnie said as he slid out of the bustling room full of naked old guys, and went into the bathroom. The bathroom had two windows higher up than the little eight-year-old kid could reach, but somebody had placed a solitary chair in the far corner that might give him some assistance to reach the window. It was an old building with an old style of windows that easily rose up instead of pushing out. With the height of the snow next to the building, he wouldn't have had the strength to push it out. He slid the chair next to the window, and attempted to raise it. He tried for a few seconds until he noticed the window had a latch on it. Hurriedly, he unlatched the window, slid it open, and stuck his left leg out the window. In a flash, a bare Mister Hamilton burst into the bathroom, and tried to grab the youngster, but he was too fast. Ronnie hopped out the window, rolled down the hill, and laid flat on his back for a few seconds. Once he stumbled to his feet, he raced into the wooded area behind the building. Worried, he walked through the deep, unyielding snow for over two hours before he came to a place in the city that he recognized. He knew that Dennis would kill him for skipping out on the festivities, because an unsatisfied customer never paid full price. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't allow all those men to rape him like that. By the time he made it into the sewer, he couldn't feel his feet. He walked gingerly against the wall, and came up on Dedra, as she sat beside the enormous pod attached to the wall.

"Who are you?" Ronnie asked.

Dedra—startled from Ronnie's voice—jumped to her feet in a fighting stance. "Oh … it's just a little boy."

"Little? I'm twelve," he said in a strong, forceful voice. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm just resting," she said softly, "Go 'bout your business, kid."

He looked down the hallway for any signs of Dennis, but didn't see anybody. "You don't belong here, lady. It's a danger place..."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

The warmth of the sewer felt like a legitimate home to Ronnie, and he didn't discuss the previous night with his Momma because she'd be seething with anger for him leaving the party. He tried his best to sleep, but had problems because he knew Benny and Vivian had to face the repeated rapes all night. When it came to making money, she didn't care about the consequences most of the time. She had a hard time differentiating between good, bad, or indifferent when it came to making money. She often told her son that making fast cash came with severe consequences that could result in prison or death.

"Money's money," she said as she looked up from her Bible. "You never see a surface dweller with money frowning about anything intangible. They deal with what's real."

The shanty town bustled with every family engaged in cooking, cleaning, and bathing in the nasty sewer water, and most of the kids had returned from the Libertine function. On some level, the majority of the people involved in the community engaged in some kind of illegal activity. It was expected. All the kids knew how to mix drugs like meth and crack. It was almost a mandatory practice for the sewer dwellers. His momma was a master pick pocketer, and taught him how to lift a wallet without anybody seeing him. If she wasn't panhandling underneath some bridge somewhere, she stole wallets or trinkets or anything to make a quick buck. He didn't know if his Momma believed in God, but she used the wonders of Jesus in order to trick people into giving her money. He stopped believing in Jesus around the age of five. In his mind, Jesus was Santa Clause; and if Santa Clause didn't exist, then Jesus didn't either.

Cora kept a small, snubbed nose thirty-eight pistol inside of her tent, and Ronnie knew exactly how to use it. She stole the pistol from a man that she used to run the streets with when Ronnie was a little kid. In the middle of the night, Cora taught Ronnie how to load and unload the weapon, fire it, and what it looked like concealed underneath a thick shirt. All day she taught him how to survive, pleased that he learned quickly—even though he didn't know much about living.

His Momma sat outside of the small tent on a folding chair reading the Bible, and he still had on his spiffy little tuxedo, black tie, and nice, shiny black shoes. Unfortunately, the snow, mud and rough trek back to the sewer had diminished the sharp look of his clothing, but he didn't care. At the moment, he enjoyed the warmth of the water cleansing machine, and nibbled on a piece of old bread. He knew his Momma was planning on using God to make some money as soon as the snow melted, but he didn't care. She had spent several months in jail for stealing in the past, but it was common practice. When she started her scamming, she usually took it a step too far, and ended up spending a night in the county jail. The majority of cops knew her by her first name, and pitied her because of her squalid living conditions.

"Cora, when are you going to learn?" The cops asked her the last time they caught her scamming an old woman. She didn't have an ounce of sorrow in her face, and simply kept quiet during the whole, one-sided conservation.

"Surface dwelling cops think they know every damn thing," she said as she placed her Bible on her knees. Ronnie took off his jacket, placed it on the ground, and watched Vivian in the dirty water. She scrubbed the makeup off her face with a white towel, and looked more like herself than she did at the party.

Judy Lo—Benny's momma—sat on the other side of the sewer river, and watched her daughter bathe in the nasty water. Judy looked sickly most of the time, and had sores consistent with the pictures of people suffering from AIDs. She coughed constantly, and it was a rough cough too. She had thinning grayish black hair, but she was only thirty-three, far too young to look so old. Unfortunately, the majority of women aged horribly in the underbelly of Gotham because of the harsh conditions, drugs, and a lack of medical care. Judy probably had plenty of opportunity to receive the medications needed to cause her disease to go into remission, but she didn't care. A government medical center stood on the corner adjacent to the manhole that had the medications to treat her disease, but she didn't care. She continued to prostitute throughout Gotham almost daily, and nobody cared that she had a spreadable social disease. More than a few men desired her emaciated look, and she enjoyed looking emaciated. It was her way of maximizing the amount of money with her body.

All the adults took illicit drugs all the time too. Several of the women ran a drug lab farther down the hallway in order to keep the community high, and make some money on the side. The bulk of the kids had a few meth rocks in their pockets in order to sell. By the time any of the women turned twenty-one, they already had a mouth full of rotten teeth. The only dental care that took place in the underbelly of Gotham was total tooth extraction. A free government dental clinic existed farther down on Fifth Street, but none of the underbelly used it.

Some of the women caught a gigantic catfish out of the sewer water, cleaned it, and seasoned it with salt and pepper. It was such a big fish that his Momma said, "It won't taste good, but it's nourishing." She placed the Bible on her lap, and watched him eat his meal of fish.

Ronnie had a few pieces of the overly cooked meat on a white, paper plate, and enjoyed it; but all of a sudden, Dennis and another Joker named Fletch charged into the room with grimaces on their faces. Ronnie's heart raced out of fear, because he knew he cost Dennis a lot of money. Dennis knew right where to find Ronnie too, and the kid didn't try to hide because he knew that he had welshed on a client.

"You!" Dennis pointed at the little kid with his right index finger. Ronnie threw his leftover food on the ground, and ran as fast as his short, little legs would take him. It didn't take long for Dennis to catch the boy, smack him a few times, and tell him exactly what he did wrong. "You cost me money, boy."

Ronnie tried to struggle, but Dennis was far too strong. Ronnie's Momma charged at the thug, but he turned, knocked her on the ground, and she fell face down on the concrete surface.

"What did he do?" Cora asked with a grimace of pain on her face.  
"He darted on a customer," he replied.  
"He did what?" She asked.  
"He ran out on Mister Hamilton," he said.  
"What's the first rule, Ronnie?" His momma asked.

Dennis had the heel of his left foot on the boy's chest. With tears in Ronnie's eyes, he said, "Money over comfort."

"That's right," Dennis quipped in a throaty voice.

Ronnie reached for his Momma, and grunted a little, but nobody wanted to defy the Jokers. He tried to get her to look at him, but she turned away from him, and stared adamantly at the ground. Dennis reached down, grabbed the boy by his shirt, and said, "Friday, you got Mister Leener," he snarled passionately, "God help you if you skate out on this one."  
Dennis walked away from Ronnie, kicked down several of the tents in the shanty town, and sneered toward one of the young girls with a look of fear on her face.  
The residents seemed relieved that Dennis and his friend, Fletch, left without doing any real damage to the community. The ladies worked for the next hour to fix the tents and straighten up the mess. Ronnie participated a bit, but he felt angered because he was powerless to stand up to the Jokers.

Living underneath the city of Gotham was tantamount to living in a gigantic septic tank, and Ronnie knew it. The children of the sewer grew up fast because they experienced every sin under the sun. The Jokers bargained them like packs of cigarettes in prison, and they learned to never say "no" to the advances of their abusers. When the lowly children of the wretched sewers had an injury, they brushed it off like it never happened. Nobody listened to the poor when they cried, when they begged, when they complained. So, they never did complain about the predators like the Jokers because nobody listened. The children met with their abusers without any contention, and learned to take the abuse with a smile.  
Small bumps—itchy and pussy—covered Ronnie's forearms, but he didn't know what caused it. Was it the rodents or the monstrous catfish causing the nasty rash? It worried him, because he kept hearing rumors of some of the kids dying from sexually related diseases, but he tried his best to put it in the back of his mind. He had done things with Mister Leener that worried him every day; but if he didn't do it, the Jokers would kill his Momma. Vivian Lo—Benny's sister—walked over to him, and gave him a piece of cherry candy with a soft, chewy center. It was his favorite candy outside of the chocolate mints. Her hair went down to the center of her back, and she usually sat quietly across the way with a stoic look on her face. The majority of kids in the shanty town practice stoicism, because they didn't want to discuss the sordid world of Gotham's underbelly. Nobody did. Vivian didn't have the perfect teeth like the kids on the surface of the city. She looked like she had too many teeth in her mouth, and they were turned in every direction imaginable. She wasn't the only sewer dweller with a bad set of teeth. The majority of the kids battled with decaying teeth, drug abuse, and rape.  
"You have to see your handler tomorrow?" She asked with a soft, high-pitched voice. She placed her right arm on Ronnie's shoulder in a loving manner.

"It'll be okay," he said with a soothing voice. He looked up at her, and smiled. The teeth in his mouth stood straight, almost perfect. "Mister Leener keeps it simple. By the book, if you know what I mean?"

She gave him a half smile. "Better than my handler. He's all about the tools."

"That sounds like my first handler. That's how I got these cuts on my wrist," he said as he pulled back the sleeve on his tuxedo. His arms had scars on them from rope burns that left indelible marks.

"Where's the Justice Corp?" She asked with a throaty, unpleasant voice.

"Don't ask," he retorted, "It'll only make you mad when you realize nobody cares about us."

Her eyes watered slightly as she looked at all the kids with the look of pain on their faces. Dirty, scrawny, underfed, ignorant—it all disgusted her. "You're right, Ronnie. If the Justice Corp cared, then that man wouldn't have nearly choked me to death last night."

He hugged her with a tight grip. "I wondered if he hurt you."

"Yeah. Mister Garrett handled it," she said, "Told him to never come near me again."  
The night came rather quickly, and the majority of the shanty town went to bed by ten o'clock. The ground seemed a bit hard for Ronnie, and he struggled to find a comfortable position. The struggle between him and Dennis weighed heavy on his conscious, and he had a hard time dealing with it. Several of the kids worked as escorts overnight, and they had already left out of the busy room. Ronnie stood outside of his tent without any shoes, and let the concrete scratch the bottom of his feet. He rubbed his feet back and forth on the concrete in order to sooth whatever itch he had. He watched Vivian as she slept on the hard floor a few feet from him, peacefully and quietly. She sometimes slept with her momma and brother on the other side of the room, but she liked to hang out with Tumbler Baily. She was about the same age as Vivian, and had a way of forgetting about the pain of prostituting when she was in the shanty town.

Ronnie wore only the bottom half of his white tuxedo. The white suit had turned dingy and tattered, but he didn't care. He rolled the top half into a wad that he tried to use to rest his head. He didn't have an actual pillow, so he used whatever he could as a pillow. It unraveled every time he found the perfect position to doze off for the night, but then the white jacket would unravel, and force him to readjust it. Finally, after a few hours of fighting with the jacket, he stood up, walked around, and tried to push the previous day out of his mind. Nothing ever went smoothly in the underbelly of the city, but he desired to have one day without violence or prostitution or doing things just to survive.

A loud scream—something in the hallway—frightened him. Looking in the direction of the shrieking, he couldn't see anything from his location. Immediately, He ran down the dark tunnel, and saw an arm sticking out of the cocoon on the wall. It looked as if the cocoon was giving birth to a grown woman. First came one arm, then another arm, and then a girl's head surfaced from the watery bag of flesh. Clumps of goo fell off her face onto the ground, and Ronnie had to force himself not to throw up. An older woman came running down the hallway, and screamed, "Do you know who I am, Jessica?" The girl retched several times, and then heaved up a flood of vomit.

"Momma," she said with a crackling voice. "Where am I?"

Ronnie looked on with a bit of apprehension because he didn't understand what was happening. He felt like he would retch too, but was able to hold it back. The girl had to be at least six feet tall, black, completely naked, and toned from head to toe. He had never seen anybody as ripped as her. Nobody. She looked like royalty with her svelte appearance.

"You've been born again, child," the older woman said.

"Something's wrong," Jessica said with a soft voice. She looked back at Ronnie, grimaced, and then asked, "Are the kids in trouble, Momma?"

"It's not our concern," she said.

"If not ours, then whose?" Jessica asked with a serious look on her face. She waved at Ronnie, and then turned toward the manhole to leave the underground hell hole. "Why do I have this emptiness?"


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

The exordium of Jessica's life didn't truly happen on her natural birth, but truly took place after her cocooning phase. She tried her best to understand her momma's diatribe about her condition, but couldn't fathom being anything more than a human being. She sat in the living room on the leather sofa with several of her father's journals, and tried to comprehend what had happened to her. She thought the wasp venom caused all her problems, but she now realized her metamorphoses was a natural part of her life cycle. To put it mildly, she thought of it as a second puberty phase. She had a long body frame with a svelte appearance. Her muscles were elongated, and she looked as if she came from Ethiopia or somewhere exotic.  
She thought through her metamorphoses from the beginning to the ending, and realized she was nothing more than an anthropomorphic person. In the back of her mind, she wanted to decathect from the human race as a way to move past the pain of only being human in form. She had two hands, two arms, two legs, and every human attribute possible, but her strength and sensory perceptions had increased beyond anything imaginable. She felt the flow of energy racing through her svelte body, and loved it. Unfortunately, she also felt the pull of the glove. It was like a siren calling her every time she tried to focus on anything of value. Her momma had scurried off to work, and left her at home to deal with her new godlike powers.  
The First thing she did was head to the shower, and scrub her skin with a harsh, abrasive scrubbing pad in order to remove all the reminiscence of the sewer from her poor body. She had a complete visual of every rodent that crossed her path as she cooked inside of the cocoon. She felt that she handled the rats with civility, caution, caring because she wanted to kill every last one of them. One of the nasty rodents nibbled on her cocoon, but a burst of energy frightened it, and it retreated to the safety of the water. She realized that she had grown at least two inches while in the cocoon, and it made her nervous about her clothing. The majority of her goth apparel probably wouldn't fit, and she didn't have any money to buy anything new. She had a couple of black dresses that might be okay to wear, but all of her pants would need adjusting or become charitable items for the poor. Once she finished bathing, she admired her tight abs in the mirror, and found it hard to believe that she looked like a figure model. She didn't have a single blemish on her swarthy skin, and she worried that the wasp stings had caused permanent damage to her face. She didn't have one mark on her face.  
The algid air blew hard against the quaint, little home, and Jessica watched the snow drifts out the living room window. Wearing some black silk pajamas about an inch too short, she stood by the living room window, and watched the snow fall haphazardly. She hit the "Deice" button in order to keep the snow off the driveway for her momma, when she arrived home from work. She thought about the precarious situation happening in the sewers, and knew all about the horrific prostitution ring that involved the city's elite residents. It seemed like a hopeless endeavor to tackle so many powerful people, but she couldn't imagine living in a world where something as insidious as child prostitution went unchallenged. According to her father's journals, she had the ability to absorb thoughts; and when the boy sat next to her during her cocooning phase, his thoughts became her thoughts. She read every inch of his mind, and saw only sex, drugs, and death. It felt like a world of chaos, and the boy struggled every day with the realization that his death was imminent. Unfortunately, she knew the residents of the sewer lived life as a bunch of mulligrubs—angry about anybody who interfered with their way of life.  
She had an epiphany about life in the sewers, about the parents who prostituted their kids in order to bring in the money. Suddenly, her mind went awry with the idea of the parents forcing their kids into prostitution, and she fell backwards onto the couch. How could they do that? She asked herself a million questions, but that was the easiest question to ask aloud. Disheartened, she knew if she told the authorities about the prostitution ring that took place in Gotham, it would cause dissension in the sewers. It would pit the parents against the children and the elite against the paupers. At the same time, she knew about the probability of the children living in the sewers prior to her metamorphoses, and never thought about imposing her will on them. Suddenly, she felt like her newly found powers had gone to her head. She wanted to interfere in the actions of man. What right did she have to exact her will on the authorities of Gotham. Even though Superman's strength trumped any beings on the planet, he never interfered in the horrors of segregation, race riots, or even the nuclear arms race. He sat in the shadows of some of the greatest moments of the twentieth century, silently and passively.  
The more she thought about the sewer dwellers the more she became confused about the idea of helping them.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

For some child molesters, they like to take an insurmountable amount of precautions, measured by the amount of security on their homes, not the frequencies of pedophilic encounters. The majority of the elitists involved in the illicit behavior of prostituting children didn't worry about any of the children complaining. They knew the consequences of telling authorities about the prostitution ring, and it had to do specifically with the huge water pump that kept the place warm. The water pump machine had the ability to produce a noxious toxin in the air that killed everybody who took a whiff of it in seconds. The residents didn't know about the dangerous of the machine, so they went about business as usual.

Vivian, Buddy, and Ronnie sat next to the stream of water, and tried to catch a few catfish for dinner, and Ronnie continued to replay Jessica's birth in his mind. Vivian lamented about her abuser's heart attack, and she had to be the one to call the authorities. She didn't even know the man's real name, but he had her call him Curly. Curly hired her at least once a week for the last year to do unmentionable things to him, and when she hit him repeatedly with the leather whip, the man had a massive heart attack. She made the ominous call to the authorities, but wouldn't give her name under any circumstances. She could have used a fake name, but she had a hard time thinking of anything. The man lay on the bed with his eyes wide opened, not breathing, and most likely deceased, so she ran out of his apartment, caught the subway, and headed back to the sewer. The protection of the system was more important than one fat man dying of a heart attack. It was the law of the their world.  
Unfortunately, she felt badly for leaving the poor soul on the bed to die. He had a gentle hand when it came to the way he abused her, and she learned to enjoy him on some level. When he picked her up to play, her face lit up every time because he always had well-prepared food, nice music, and he treated her with some semblance of respect. In a world of abuse, the recipient of abuse doesn't always hate the maltreater. The maltreated may learn how to love the abuser with all their heart; and when an outside entity or force tries to hurt the progenitor of pain, the afflicted will sacrifice everything to protect the abuser. The ill-treated will learn to repeat the abuse in time, and the cycle will continue for generations to come. The battered always batters, and it would take an unconquerable amount of education to stop that.  
The children of the sewer didn't immediately recognize the abuse because many of them didn't have the ability to read. Ronnie and Buddy knew how to read, but Vivian and the rest of the kids didn't have that knowledge. Ronnie and Buddy knew the abuse wasn't normal, but protected the system for the good of the community. Vivian equated sex as payment for food, and thought the kids on the surface had more sex than anybody because most of them were overtly plump. She often wondered how much sex it took to be fat, and she couldn't fathom it.  
"People die, Vivian," Buddy said with a caring voice. He put his arm around his sister.  
"I saw a dead body once," Ronnie said, "Didn't know him, so I didn't care."  
"Yeah … Carl was a good man," she said with tears rolling down her face. She wiped her face with both hands. "Just hate that I left him there."  
"He'd have wanted you to," Ronnie said, "What if it got out?"  
"Why's it so wrong?" Vivian asked.  
"'Cause it's the law," Ronnie said with a grimace on his face. "Shoot, if the authorities find out about us, they'll kill us..."  
"It's true," Buddy interjected, "That's what happened to Markus."


End file.
